Moving out

I can't begin to explain how proud I am of Miss E. When she first arrived she was insecure and looking for a leader. I feel that there were two root causes of the problems that she was experiencing. First being her insecurity, and the second being actually that she didn't know how to move her feet and was very uncomfortable doing so. As I started working with this horse I immediately saw that she responded well to me on the ground and stayed respectful. As I started getting on I noticed that she would kinda loose herself and fall completely apart and act silly. Things like not standing still when I would get on, changing gates constantly, fighting the bridle, and being generally panicked about being ridden. After I rode her for a while the first time I stopped to let her rest. She still wanted to paw the ground and do what ever she wanted. I simply put her back to work, I didn't want to make the work torture but work enough that she knew she was working. Then offer to let her stand still again. It took some time for her to relax and stand still. It seems that once she understood that lesson a lot more started to happen for her attitude and she became a lot more willing. The more I rode her the more I started seeing that she wasn't comfortable moving at the faster gates. She acted like she just thought that she couldn't. I spent several days just moving the horse around and letting her travel, I stayed out of her way and just let her go. Once she was able to travel around and be relaxed I was able to start working on her being collected and handling better. Right now I feel that I am riding a horse that is not only calm and willing but handy enough to ride and have fun. Until next time, God Bless, BW